Beastmaster III - The Eye Of Braxus (1996)

The beastmaster Dar (V's Marc Singer) is reunited with his young half- brother Tal (Starship Trooper's Casper Van Dien, sporting a most unconvincing wig) now ruler of the small barbarian kingdom of Aruk, and the warrior Seth (horror legend Tony Todd), both characters from the original movie, but now recast.

Tal was bequeathed a mysterious amulet by their late father, and this is - of course - the MacGuffin (the titular Eye of Braxus) sought by the warlord-wizard Agon (the ever-excellent David Warner).

After Dar leaves Tal's encampment, it is set upon by Agon's Crimson Warriors (so-called because of their red-coloured sword blades) who kidnap the king and take him back to their master.

You can't go wrong with David Warner

Agon is pissed though because Tal no longer has all of the Eye of Braxus, which is required to open a doorway beyond which lies the imprisoned Lord of The Pit, the evil old god Braxus, and "ultimate power" to any who release him.

Canny Tal had given half of the medallion to his wandering, nomadic brother for safe-keeping.

Driven to rescue his brother, Dar teams up with Seth, who had been acting as Tal's advisor, and roguish-swordswoman Shada (Sandra Hess, who played Andrea Von Strucker in The Hoff's Marvel movie, Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D, and who has surprisingly coiffured hair for someone in her line of work).

Shada's loyalties tend to flip-flop, as she - rather successfully - plays both sides, and eventually picks the winning one.

As a love-interest for Dar, Shada was never going to measure up to Kiri (the late, lamented Tanya Roberts of Charlie's Angels fame) from the original Beastmaster, but she grew on me as her character developed.

Near-naked and constantly oiled-up Dar is never without his small coterie of telepathically-linked animal companions, a pair of ferrets (representing his cunning), a hawk (as his eyes), and a lion (for strength).

Oddly the lion has the same name - Ruh - as Dar's panther from the first film, but I suspect this is a similar naming convention to The Witcher's Geralt of Rivia always calling his horse Roach.

By the way, these aren't CGI creatures, but flesh-and-blood animals on the set, which does make a scene of the lion's capture slightly uncomfortable viewing, but I like to think the noble beast's handlers took good care of it.

After a run-in with some savage hill people, Seth, Dar, and Shada get to Agon's city, and decide to join a circus camped outside the walls, as a cover to smuggle themselves in.

Only the circus (which seems to have just two performers and a stable boy on staff) turns out to be run by an ex-lover of Seth's, Morgana (soap opera stalwart Lesley-Anne Down), who possesses a magical gem in her headband that can turn living things into animals.

Morgana, Dar, and Shada

This all gets a bit awkward, and leads to an another apparent betrayal of Dar, but Morgana actually has a plan and Dar being imprisoned in Agon's fortress is part of it.

I have to admit that I really enjoyed Beastmaster III: The Eye of Braxus, like the previous films in the franchise it neither takes itself too seriously nor sends-up its subject matter.

The low, made-for-TV, budget, and the steady hand of established television director Gabrielle Beaumont (who lists multiple episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Hill Street Blues, and L.A. Law, to name-check just a few, on her CV)  lends an air of Xena: Warrior Princess and Legendary Journeys of Hercules to proceedings that prepares us mentally for the "man-in-a-rubber-suit" final Big Bad.

While David Wise's script has its plot wobbles on occasion and isn't going to win an Oscar, there's great evidence of world-building here. More places and people get actual names in Beastmaster III than most B-movie sword-and-sorcery flicks.

The cast may be small - and this makes for some comically empty backdrops to some scenes - but most of the named characters we meet are interesting and quirky.

So much of the story also has a very Conan feel to it, but it's just the budgetary limitations once again that prevent it from going full wide-screen barbarian, instead recasting Dar's band of brothers as a mismatched party of Dungeons & Dragons adventurers instead.

It's all a question of managing your expectations, if you go in expecting another chapter of Peter Jackson's Lord of The Rings, you're going to be disappointed, but if you're looking for something more akin to Hercules or Xena then you can have a great time with this hour-and-a-half movie.

Yes, of course, it could have been so much better, but there's actually so much to enjoy that did make it onto the screen that I must confess I was pleasantly entertained by The Eye of Braxus.

SAW WEEK: Saw II - The Director's Cut (2005)

The Saw saga continues in the creatively named Saw II, where we meet disgruntled, corrupt, cop Eric Matthews (Blue Blood's Donnie Wahlberg), who is the latest police officer drawn into the twisted machinations of Jigsaw.

Called to a crime scene by his ex-partner, Kerry (Starship Trooper's Dina Meyer), clues on the victim's murderous torture device lead Matthews to an old warehouse, where he finds the wheelchair-bound, dying Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) .

But before Matthews can arrest the criminal mastermind, Jigsaw - who says his name is John - reveals  that Matthews' brattish son Daniel (Erik Knudson) is imprisoned in a booby-trapped house with half-a-dozen other people... and it is slowly filling with poisonous gas. 

Jigsaw has, essentially, invented the modern "escape room" genre.

Although not directed by James Wan, Saw II's director Darren Lynn Bousman wisely homages many of Wan's stylistic quirks (particularly the use of a flurry of fast, disorientating cuts) to cement the continuity of the franchise.

Once again, we have the parallel storylines - the captives in the house trying to figure their way to safety before the gas kills them, and then the police officers interrogating Jigsaw to try and find the location of the house.

However, while Bousaman co-scripted the film with the first movie's writer Leigh Wannell, this chapter severely ups the ick factor, leaving less to the imagination and rubbing our faces in more of the gore.

In fact, there was one sequence in particular - involving a woman in a pit - that I found almost unbearable to watch, as it triggered one of my medically-recognised phobias.

Squirm-inducing moments aside, thanks to some marvellous scriptwriting and plotting, Jigsaw is a Batman-level villain (he really reminds me of my favourite Bat-rogue, The Riddler, for the trails of clues he leads).

And John very clearly conforms to the old maxim that all great villains believe they are the heroes of their stories. Jigsaw definitely believes he is making the world a better place through his twisted "games". He actually wants people to survive, because he believes they will come out the other side as stronger personalities.

As in the original, the film climaxes with a brilliant twist, where all the clues were right in front of us (and Detective Matthews) but we were all constantly chasing red herrings and misdirects.

The traps are nastier in this one, because we see them more in action rather than enduring the tension of wondering what would happen if they were set off, but we learn a bit more about Jigsaw, his illness, and his cunning plan to defeat it.

Further confirming the overlap in the Venn diagram of 'comic book superheroes' and 'the Saw franchise' check out this delightful article on Bloody Disgusting about Six Comic Book Death Traps That Would Be Right at Home in the ‘Saw’ Franchise.

Which also makes for inspirational reading for RPG gamesmasters looking for some devilish traps to throw player-characters into.